


Alternate

by ravenclawkohai



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:02:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenclawkohai/pseuds/ravenclawkohai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of taking him to the Void in his dream, the Outsider forces Corvo (low chaos) to watch the life of another world's Corvo (high chaos).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alternate

                When he woke in the Void, he thought it was another dream. He was certain he’d step onto a new floating rock and the Outsider would appear before him. He wandered the Void, and as time passed ( _if he ever had something to thank Coldridge for it was endless practice at counting minutes_ ), he got a sinking feeling in his stomach. It had been much too long. The Outsider never let him wander the Void aimlessly like this. He always brought him here for a purpose.

                ( _and this is too harmless to be one of his games_ )

                Corvo dropped through a window, turned on its side like a trap door, and fell into a chair. His arms were suddenly bound and there they were, Burrows and Campbell, standing shoulder to shoulder like always. The burn over his eye felt fresh. He remembered this moment. He awoke and they—

                “Corvo, sign the confession. The pain will end. You can live out your last days in peace. Surely, that’s what Jessamine would have preferred? And little Emily wouldn’t like to think of you here, putting yourself through this for no one’s benefit.”

                —went too far trying to get him to sign. He remembered hate burning low in his gut and his teeth setting on edge. He remembered giving them an icy stare before Campbell shook his head, told Burrows it was a waste of time and that they would try again later, and them leaving. He remembered how the guards were much more careful with him that day, afraid he would lash out at them after their superiors so nearly got a rise out of him. He remembered pacing, then slumping on his ancient mattress and putting his face in his hands. He remembered thinking that Burrows might have had a point, but that the thought of agreeing that he murdered _her_ brought bile up his throat. He couldn’t.

                But what he remembered wasn’t what happened.

                Burrows mentioned Jessamine and his muscles moved without his consent. He jerked against the cuffs, hate turning his sight red instead of burning in his stomach. The guilt of failure was heightened, making a dangerous background for every word Burrows uttered. This man was responsible for his failure, for Jessamine’s death and Emily’s abduction. These men had taken it all.

                ( _it was all true but it wasn’t what he remembered_ )

                The raw hate, both for himself and for Burrows, was almost too much. A howl was building in his throat and if the Lord Regent spoke much longer he was _going_ to find a way out of this chair to kill him.

                But Burrows stopped speaking, though he looked so, so self-satisfied.

                Corvo’s breath was coming fast through his nose, his jaw clenched tight, knuckles white from clutching at the arms of the chair. He drew himself up with every last ounce of his self-control and spat at Burrows’ feet. The Regent sneered and opened his mouth to speak again, but Campbell stopped him, wearily insisted that they stop for the day, and they left. The guards were more careful than usual returning him to his cell. He paced for hours, stopping only to kick his mattress in anger and then slump down on it, exhausted from fury, to fall asleep immediately. He woke up immediately, to find it was the next day. He laid there, thinking, counting minutes.

                But the part of him that remembered different events sat in mute horror.

                ( _this was not what he remembered)_

_(this was impossible)_

_(this might have been corvo attano, but it was not him)_

 

                He remembered everything. He remembered knocking out the Bottle Street boys outside Granny Rags’ home, but refusing to kill countless members of their gang over an old lady’s grudge. He remembered creeping down Clavering from the heights to avoid rats and guards. He remembered the guards threatening a young woman to make her hand over the elixir she found for her baby and he remembered saving her. He remembered saving Overseer Martin, sneaking through Holger Square, dodging Overseers with balconies, possessing rats, blinking through the streets just quick enough that no one could be quite sure they saw anything. He remembered slowing time to knock out both Campbell and Curnow, hiding Curnow in a dumpster, branding Campbell, and fleeing. He remembered climbing down the long, long chain to the dock, climbing into Samuel’s boat, and slumping there, exhausted but without blood on his hands.

                That wasn’t how it went this time.

                This time, he killed the Bottle Street boys, slaughtered Galvani’s men to kill more of Slackjaw’s men ( _and only for the promise of a rune_ ). He blinked right into the middle of Clavering, grim but focused, uncaring. He strolled down Clavering, shooting bullets and bolts, blinking behind men to shove a blade into their throats, killing, and _not caring_. He knew Campbell was at the end of this. That consuming hate was burning in his chest, in his lungs, making him remember how Campbell had tried to needle him into signing the confession, his part in the Empress’s death. He could have used the rooftops and ledges to sneak around the guards, but it was so much quicker to walk down the street, killing endlessly, and he had waited six long months in Coldridge for this, he was not waiting any longer than necessary.

                He poisoned both their cups because Curnow was supposed to be on duty, he should have been there to help, he was responsible too. He might have been just following orders, but Jessamine was _dead_ and Curnow could have prevented it ( _in his gut in his soul where he remembered he knew that was false that there was nothing curnow could have done against daud and his whalers and he remembered poor callista who would be so heartbroken_ ). He left both bodies there, fought his to Samuel, leaving the corpse of every man he came across behind him. He climbed down the chain, but slipped, fell, had to blink to safety so he wouldn’t die; there was just too much blood on his hands to get a good grip. Samuel covered well, but sailors were not always the best liars, and his attempt at a blank face still showed his shock and horror.

                Corvo couldn’t bring himself to care. He stepped into the boat and sat down, finally starting to feel the weariness his hate had masked. Samuel was silent, staring. Corvo looked up at him, locking eyes for seconds passed acceptable, then leaned overboard to wash the blood off his hands.

                “Whenever you’re ready, Samuel.”

                Samuel started the boat and began to steer them away.

 

                When he finally had Emily back, he felt the same sense of relief. He was distantly glad he had the forethought to wipe his hands off on his coat, wiped away some of the blood, so that it did not stain her white clothes. She didn’t show horror upon seeing him. The blood faded into the dark cloth of his coat. The mask may have blood dripping from its metal, but his face was clean. He got Emily out safely, feeling a small scrap of peace after so long.

                He had fought his way to Campbell out of hate. He fought his way into the Golden Cat, but not out of eagerness to kill the Pendletons. They had benefited from the regency, were friends with Burrows, were corrupt and cruel, but that was unimportant. What mattered was Emily. He was desperate to have her back, to know she was safe, to protect her. To ease some of his guilt and repair some of his massive failure. He couldn’t change how seeing her mother killed effected Emily, but he could protect her from now on. He could put her back on the throne and keep her safe from anyone who would wish her harm.

                ( _but the more he watched the more he doubted he could protect her from himself_ )

 

                When he was sent to fetch Sokolov, he did not kill out of urgency. Sokolov may be corrupt, may have been there that day, but he was a natural philosopher, not a soldier. This time, he killed because it did not occur to him to do anything else. He had slaughtered his way into both the Abbey and the Golden Cat, why would Kaldwin’s Bridge be any different? He did not stop to think about it. He simply climbed onto the bridge, readied his weapons, and walked down the street, letting them come to him. He saw the woman, surrounded by rats, begging for help, but he was there for the bone charm, nothing else. He got the charm and left. She probably had the plague by now anyway.

                He gathered Sokolov, strolled down the streets he had emptied earlier, and went to Samuel, who no longer seemed horrified. He didn’t question the blood and he bore the sound of the screams without question. He dumped Sokolov into the boat, nodded when Samuel asked if he was ready to go, and climbed in to sit on the prow. He used the river to wash the blood off his hands and mask, but they were stained, stayed pink anyway. He shrugged and leaned back against the prow to wait through their journey.

                ( _what horrified him most was not what he was capable of doing in the name of hate or love, but indifference)_

               

                When given the choice to feed Sokolov to the rats or go purchase a bribe, Corvo just couldn’t see the point in wasting the gold when rats would help for free.

                ( _the idea of the rats stripping Sokolov of flesh occurred to him)_

_(it just didn’t matter)_

_(the man wearing his skin and living a sick mockery of his life was a monster_ )

               

                He remembered giving the letter to Lord Shaw but refusing to kill for Trevor; he wouldn’t kill the guilty, he was not going to start killing the innocent over someone else’s grudge. He remembered signing his name in the guest book with a smile on his lips, imagining the horror of the guards when they realized and how Burrows would near foam at the mouth. He remembered talking to Brisby, feeling sick at the idea, but not seeing another option. He remembered playing drunk, ignoring the guard and stumbling down to the kitchen, the exasperated guard on his heels. He remembered creeping up the stairs, reading the diaries of the Ladies Boyle, and creeping back downstairs. He remembered stumbling drunkenly out of the staircase and the Overseer’s noise of disgust. He remembered hunting down Esma Boyle, dressed in an ironic virginal white, and giving her the impression that they were going upstairs for activities that were far from his mind. He remembered her leading the way into the room, hinting at her relationship with Burrows, and him knocking her out. He remembered catching her, lifting her carefully over his shoulder, and blinking down to the basement, handing Esma to Brisby, and feeling like he needed to bathe for hours.

                This, again, was not what happened.

                He handed the letter to Lord Shaw and won the duel before his opponent could even draw. He walked through the party. He blinked up to the Garden Balcony, killed the guard, found the diaries of the Ladies and went to enter the party. He signed his name in hopes of the Lord Regent seeing the guest book and living in fear for his last few days. He approached Lydia in her red suit ( _it was a different sister this time how could it be lydia it was supposed to be esma_ ) and made a half-hearted attempt to get her alone. If he tried harder, she probably would have taken him somewhere else. As it was, he admitted he was here to kill her, grabbed her arm, pulled her to him, and slide his sword through her chest in the middle of her foyer. The party goers screamed, the guards called to one another, and the Overseers came, one with a music box. A bolt between the eyes for the music-player, grenades for the guards while his magic returned, and swarms of rats for the rest. He summoned more rats than were strictly necessary. He wanted to be sure that the guards and Overseers wouldn’t follow, and if some aristocrats died, well, maybe it was time for them to have a taste of what the streets were like.

                He washed the blood off his hands as best he could, but it was getting harder to do. The skin was stained a pink that darkened with each mission, but there was nothing to be done.

                ( _the Corvo that remembered felt a deeper horror every time those stains darkened_ )

 

                He remembered returning to the Tower. He remembered his heart pounding and his palms sweating and feeling nervous and half trapped in memories. He remembered feeling skittish as he sneaked through the waterlock and into the building he had once called home. He remembered feeling infinitely grateful as the confession played over the loudspeaker and he saw the Lord Regent’s own guards carry him away.

                All he could remember was feeling, and if that was true, how would it be for the monster who felt both so much ( _too much_ ) that it pushed him to slaughter and felt so little _(much too little)_ that he killed innocents without blinking?

                He went into the Tower as he went into the Abbey: reckless and ruthless. He climbed the waterlock, walked straight through, blinking behind men, cutting throats, using Walls of Light against men, slaughtering shamelessly. This was different, however. Going into the Abbey, there was a sense of impatience, and urgency to reach Campbell that motivated him to run down streets killing guards, with a fiery hate toward the High Overseer as motivation. This time, there was no impatience, only hate. He hated Burrows, he hated the men that protected them, stood by them. Coldridge had taught him hate, but the assassinations had perfected it. What had once been so focused was now all-encompassing, and it spared no one.

                ( _if he had been like this when he killed campbell would he have killed curnow)_

                When he killed Burrows, he almost felt relief.

                Almost.

                His hate cooled. He had done it. He had killed everyone responsible for Jessamine’s death. He couldn’t bring himself to kill the guards anymore. He blinked past them, down, into the Lord Regent’s old chambers. He entered, intending to rob the dead man and then go immediately to Samuel. He opened the safe, pocketing everything he found, though he stopped to read the paper note.

                And suddenly the fire in his chest began to burn bright again.

                He might have killed the men who ordered her death, who schemed and benefitted, but the man who put that sword through her ribs was still out there.

                And now he had a name.

                It wasn’t over.

                ( _but for a man like this corvo was becoming it would never be over_ )

 

                He used the time in Samuel’s boat to calm down. He would find Daud, though the Loyalists would likely not be able to help. He’d do it on his own. That was for later. There were plans to be made and likely a celebration of some sort. He wasn’t in the mood, but he could pretend. For Emily.

                He climbed out of the boat, and went to the door. He paused to take a deep breath, to make the fire burn lower, and reached a ( _bloodstained_ ) hand out, but the door opened before he could touch the knob.

                “Did you kill anybody tonight?” Emily asked. She did not look afraid or worried or very effected at all. He blinked in surprise. “How many?” His brows furrowed.

                ( _and his heart broke_ )

                She ran into the Hound Pits, back to her death drawing, and Havelock and Pendleton came to congratulate him. He kept glancing at Emily, but accepted the toast. He finished his glass, set it on the counter, and went to her side. When he talked to her, she spoke of him smelling of blood, of crashing ships, killing men, using her title as Empress as an excuse. Callista spoke of Emily’s certainty that Empresses should be ruthless.

                He frowned. He felt disconcerted. He didn’t know what to do about it, couldn’t think straight with the world swimming around him. He went to his room to lie down. He would handle it in the morning.

 

                The Corvo that remembered was not a proud man, but he believed in solving his own problems. He did not ask for help. He disliked asking people for anything that was not strictly a part of their duty. He had pleaded once in his life: he begged Jessamine not to send him away. She knew him, she knew what it meant for him to plead that way. She sent him anyway. Since then, his belief that asking anyone for anything in that manner was useless. Coldridge could not make him beg. Cold nights, little food, a thousand cuts and burns could not make him beg.

                Watching himself turn into a monster could not make him beg.

                Watching that monster affect Emily so greatly could.

                He lied there, poisoned, though it was silent, though he couldn’t move his lips, he _begged_.

                “ _Please_ ,” he called, thought, whispered.

                “Not this. Stop this, I won’t watch anymore, I _can’t_ watch anymore.”

                Silence.

                “I know you can hear me!” Corvo screamed.

                “Anything else, I don’t care, any of your other little games, just _please_ , stop this.”

                Silence.

                “ _Please_ ,” he whispered one last time.

                The monster’s eye flickered open. The Loyalists stood around him, but they were silent. He remembered this, Teague and Pendelton’s nervous words, Samuel’s apology. He waited for it to begin. It didn’t.

                For the first time in a long time, he attempted to move.

                Corvo sat up.

                The Outsider stood, leaning against the doorframe, one hand wrapped around his elbow, the other at his lips like he was almost trying to hide his smirk behind his curled fingers. Black eyes watched as he sat up, stood up, and found himself separate from the Corvo with the bloodstained hands who lay, almost unconscious, on the floor. He looked from this alternate self to the Outsider.

                “Fascinating,” was all He said.

                Corvo felt sickened and weary. He wanted to wake up, to go about his day, to check the patrols and hug Emily and be sure that she still drew rainbows and smiles instead of shadows and blood.

                But he refused to beg to His face.

                “You suffered through six months in Coldridge prison. You were tortured until you passed out, time and again. Your body was scarred working a job involving swords and taking bullets for other people, but now, Corvo, you are _covered_ in scars. Coldridge broke your body and your spirit, but given freedom, you put yourself most of the way back together for the sake of young Emily. But through it all, you never asked for mercy. You suffered under the Torturer’s hand in silence. You never asked the Loyalists for a spare second. You do not ask Emily for so much as an afternoon off regardless of what happens. Always, you stitch your wounds closed and you move forward.

                “You begged Jessamine to stay in Dunwall. You feared for her safety and knew the men around her better than she did. You could stomach that because you begged for her sake. You were looking forward, as you always do.”

                The Outsider pushed away from the wall and walked toward him as he spoke.

                “I put you in a world where you did nothing but look back, and you could not stomach it. In this world, you could not look past what others did to Jessamine, and you could not forgive yourself for failing. You lived frozen in that moment. You impacted the future, but lived for the past. You changed the world around you when you desired to change the past.”

                He stopped in front of him.

                “When faced with that world, trapped in your own skin and forced to watched warped versions of your own memories, to see what the consequences of what your actions would have been if you stayed locked in the past, you begged _me_. You could have taken this as a blessing. You made different choices in reality, Corvo. Your world is not so dark as this. This could have been an affirmation that you made the right choices. You took it as torture. Why?”

                At the shrines, Corvo never answered the Outsider. He had seen Him lingering in Dunwall, but he never approached, never spoke, only watched. Now, he appeared, and asked him questions. He waited. The Outsider was always curious. He was usually rhetorical. He waited for Corvo to answer with actions rather than expecting words.

                But Corvo answered this test with words, not actions. The seconds passed and it became clear that the Outsider expected him to answer his questions with words.

                “Emily,” was his only answer.

                The Outsider tilted His head, considering.

                “Little Emily,” he said slowly. “You watched your soul twist and warp, watched how you bathed in blood without real cause, but that was not what pushed you over the edge.”

                Corvo met His eyes as He stared and stared.

                He waited for an answer.

                Corvo refused. He had already given him an answer.

                The Outsider smiled.

                “I see. You were horrified by yourself, but you are too broken by now to truly care. You already failed Emily and Jessamine. You felt Jessamine’s blood on your hands, what does it matter if you drip with the blood of others? You had so much time in Coldridge to beat more guilt into yourself. The Corvo of this world horrifies you because you know just how close you came to being that man. But you have never been your own first priority. Since Coldridge, you’ve come to hate yourself; not quite as much as that Corvo, perhaps, but you do, truly. Seeing yourself consumed with hate, for yourself and the world alike, horrifies you, but you feel you deserve it and you can suffer through that as penance.

                “You never quite realized how much you affected Emily. You love her, you protect her, you would give anything for her, but you feel you are not as necessary to her as she is to you. That little girl is your world now, isn’t she, my dear? The Emily you know is so similar to the Emily from before that you never realized quite how dear you are to her, how closely she watches you, how much of an impact you truly have on her. This Corvo may be different, but he is still you. He has the same effect on Emily that you do. She watched him twist and saw how mangled and hateful he was inside, but he was all that was good in the world. A last safe haven from better times. If someone she knew as so good and so wonderful came home bloody every night, it would only be natural that she would come to think that killing is right, too. And after all, she is the Empress. If the Lord Protector can kill so many, surely she can too. _That_ was what you couldn’t cope with. Seeing how you twisted your precious, innocent Emily into—”

                “Stop.”

                The Outsider raised both his eyebrows. A grin stole over his face.

                “Two words today, Corvo. I’m impressed.”

                He stared at Him.

                A shark’s smile was all that greeted him.

                “If Burrows had known just how soft your weak spot is, he would have gotten you to sign—”

                Corvo pulled out his blade and put it to the Outsider’s throat.

                He knew he couldn’t hurt him. He knew it would be madness to try. But he lived months with the madness of another world’s Corvo, was intimately familiar with the feeling, and no longer feared it. He had to draw the line somewhere.

                ( _burrows and campbell couldn’t break him because they couldn’t hurt emily)_

 _(He could hurt her in more ways than those men could even dream of_ )

                The Outsider looked surprised. Then He looked like He had been given a treat.

                He looked like Corvo had done something fascinating.

                “Enough,” Corvo whispered.

                The Outsider eyed him, inspected him, and then grinned.

                He faded into nothing.

                And then Corvo woke up.


End file.
